Welcome to My Eternity

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2010-09-18T09:28:00.001+01:00

Hurricane Forever is going back to the pits of hell where it came from.

Nadia sent back The Molting. It’s not as revolting as I thought it was. She says I should continue because I can’t leave people hanging like that.

The truth is that I am so tired of this writing shit that I want to quit.

It’s not a screaming, crying ‘I want to quit’ fit.

It’s a ‘burn all the work and move on’ fit.

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2010-08-30T16:49:00.001+01:00

I revised The Molting.

It is now in the hands of the Great and Terrible @NadiaLee.

Contemplating starting something new.

Maybe the companion novel to Hurricane Forever.

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2010-08-27T16:33:00.001+01:00

I have discovered that I do actually have a short story and not a novella in The Molting.

Will revise.

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Enjoy Celtic Leaves

2010-08-26T14:49:00.001+01:00

I really should pick this up again.

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Meet Stephanie

2010-08-24T16:11:00.001+01:00

This was taken on day five.

Testing out my new HTC Desire.

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2010-07-28T17:13:00.001+01:00

I have done the unthinkable.

I have asked @LizUK and @McVane for my manuscript back.

Before September.

I am going to hell, and I know it.

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2010-07-27T15:59:00.001+01:00

Kaz’s Summer Camp #8:

I have officially killed my short story.

I'm working on rousing political speeches for the characters.

I'm supposed to be working on a synopsis for something or other next month but I haven't a clue what. Maybe I should have put more thought into goals...

I have slain my second oni, and started working on a third. Miss Metta is going down!

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2010-07-26T17:04:00.001+01:00

I have really really killed The Molting.

Until I make like a necromancer (which I, sadly, have eliminated from The Eternity Project YET AGAIN) and bring it back to life.

I desperately want to revise Hurricane Forever, but luckily (unluckily?) for me, I don’t actually have access to a copy. This should depress me more, BUT I think I have found my blogging mojo over on my other blog.

This is a good thing as I’ve been trying to get going on that for about forever now.

I ought to take pictures of the fabulous Miss Metta.

I’m thinking Saturday is a good day. Then my goal for August can be to stitch all the way down to the bottom so I can make sure that I have enough fabric. Amongst other things.

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2010-07-24T15:59:00.001+01:00

I have had an epiphany.

Why the hell am I messing about with The Molting? It’s a ‘practice’ short story, I get that, but it’s not really what I want to write.

Doesn’t mean that I should start revising Hurricane Forever right away, but it does mean I’ll probably spend all of August contemplating the worldbuilding I need to do for HF and my magnum opus.

I have slain the first of the Oni.

Miss Metta’s progress is astonishing indeed.

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2010-07-23T15:58:00.001+01:00

I am recovering from a monstrous bout of flu.

The kind that you think you’re on the mend from, and then you go up two flights of stairs and feel like you are DYING.

I couldn’t even move a light wooden stool up from the ground floor to my bedroom – which is on the first floor.

The Molting is revolting.

And if it’s not crying revolution, I am.

I didn’t even manage to stitch on Wednesday. I slept for 24 hours straight, waking only to eat and take my pills – I’d probably have skipped eating except that I was supposed to eat something before I took the meds.

Today, I am doing stash inventory.

What scares me is that what’s in my inventory? Doesn’t even include stuff that’s ‘kitted up’ (by that, I mean I have everything I need to start and finish the project) or what’s still on the slow boat from the UK.

And I’m pretty sure I’ve already achieved SABLE here.

Perhaps if it’s not raining tomorrow, and I have discovered in my possession an object called a Camera, I shall have provide evidence.

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2010-07-20T16:53:00.001+01:00

Kaz’s Summer Camp Week #7:

Still NOT done.

Gah. This is going to be the short story that will haunt me for the rest of my writerly life.

And if I’m not done on July 31^st, I think I’m going to junk this.

I’m pretty sure I’m coming down with something.

Apparently, a stitch a day doesn’t keep the doctor away.

But Miss Metta is lovely, thank you very much.

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2010-07-17T18:33:00.001+01:00

OMG.

I totally forgot about my Thursday deadline.

But clearly, I didn’t make it.

I think this version is better, however.

Having said that, if I don’t finish this by August 15^th, I may send it to Nadia anyway.

God help the poor woman if that’s what I do.

But my needlework proceeds apace.

There has been much progress on Miss Metta.

I’ve also made 2 batches of English Muffins from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, neither of which were successful.

They were good buns. But they weren’t English Muffins.

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2010-07-14T10:43:00.001+01:00

Kaz’s Summer Camp Week #6:

I have no idea how I’m going to make my deadline for Thursday. Brian_Ohio is probably going to come and kick my ass.

I am revising from the beginning again. It is both better and not better.

I did also make plans for Nadia to snatch my manuscript out of my hands come August 16^th post-revisions, however, so I better get cracking. She is the Queen of Evil and she is awesomely fearsome.

On the other hand, I now have necromancers in the other world I am building. That’s maybe the only bright spot in Week #6 for me.

Re: necromancers

I guess I am getting my other goal for July done too. Except that now I have to fix Hurricane Forever too.

Celtic Leaves is stitching up beautifully! J

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2010-07-11T15:16:00.001+01:00

I have fixed a key hole in my magnum opus.

I also now have Necromancers of my very own. I think. I hope. Things could still change. Not sure how I can integrate the necromancers in.

The Molting…is revolting.

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2010-07-06T16:28:00.001+01:00

Kaz’s Summer’s Camp Week #5:

I’m still stuck.

It’s like I’ve suddenly lost all inspiration to work on my short story – I think it may well have returned to being a short story because I fixed the middle.

The truth is, I don’t need to write this short story any more, and that’s maybe a big part of the problem. I’m writing it to test-run a few things for my magnum opus. It’s tested, and found wanting because it is a highly imperfect proxy for my magnum opus. I need another test story but I don’t have one at the moment.

The other thing is that it is also a rather open-ended tale. I don’t know how to deal with that yet. I thought I did, but I don’t. And since I still have more than a week…

In other news, Emily has a job. Or rather, Emily still has a job.

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2010-07-02T11:13:00.001+01:00

I have seven thousands words and a bit more.

But more importantly, I have progression of story.

Also, I think I’m beginning to really nail the voice and style of the fairytale bits, thanks to Nadia who gave me some very good advice.

Tomorrow, I have a wedding to attend and a new section on The Molting to begin.

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2010-07-01T16:57:00.001+01:00

I have the wrong beginning.

It is the right beginning if this was meant to be a romance novella. Not so much if this is a fantasy novella.

Of course, it may be that this is a romance and not a fantasy. In which case I’m going to take my muse* out and shoot her.

I have a commitment finish The Molting on July 15^th. I suspect Brian_ohio is going to kick my ass on that day because I can’t see how I’m going to complete this on deadline.

I’m not sure I’ll get any writing done until Monday, for one thing.

I’m away next week Thursday-Sunday, and I’m not taking my laptop – the idea that I’ll get anything done if I do is frankly, ridiculous.

*If I had a muse, that is.

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2010-06-30T13:05:00.001+01:00

I have cut some more.

I must stop letting my ideas get in the way of my narrative.* I let this happen too often and it wastes too much time that I could otherwise spend actually writing.

Yesterday, I ambitiously told brian_ohio that I was planning to finish my novella on July 15^th, and start revisions for it on August 1^st.

Now I actually have to do it.

Incidentally, he wrote a hilarious account of how Kaz’s Summer Camp is going, and you can read it here. It comes with Pictures!

* Courtesy of a David Mitchell interview I read today.

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2010-06-29T14:20:00.001+01:00

Kaz’s Summer Camp Week #4:

My short story has rapidly expanded to novella length. This will be the first of my many goal revisions. Sigh.

I wrote 3791 words. It would have been 4k, but I junked the last scene because it was not taking me anywhere.

Haven’t written today. Junked that scene. Must do better tomorrow.

Finished cousin’s wedding sampler. One down, and one more to go.

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#agentpay: Why I'd rather pay a reading fee than pay my agent by the hour

2010-06-28T14:05:00.001+01:00

Nadia Lee:

If people want to spend their money on sending out query letters that they spent an hour on, it's their prerogative. But it's a thankless job that agents must do, and the probability of them finding something worthy of a partial / full request is pretty slim. So why should agents' clients bear the cost of agents reading unsolicited mails (among other things) by paying higher commissions? It doesn't make any sense.

If reading fees are low (like a buck or so in my example), standard and industry-regulated, then there will be much less potential for abuse.

She’s absolutely right.

And here’s an argument I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else: I like knowing up-front what my commitments will be.

If I have to pay Agent So-and-So $x to query her/him, I can decide beforehand whether I think the chance of getting Agent So-and-So as my agent is worth $x.

But I cannot tell whether the deal My-Agent might get for me is worth the y hours multiplied by her/his hourly rate until the final contract is signed. I also think that an hourly rate is far more subject to abuse than a reading fee.

As I said earlier, a reading fee is up-front. You can do your research, and then decide whether Agent So-and-So rates $x to query. It’s just like paying to enter a lottery. With your research, you have some idea of the likelihood that the agent will/will not take you.

Hours, on the other hand, can be padded easily enough. You’d have to work really hard to figure out whether your agent is padding them or not. It’s not like you can keep an eye on them over their shoulder.

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2010-06-25T16:03:00.001+01:00

I suspect plotting is not as good for my writing as I’d like it to be.

I’m working on The Molting – I may change this to The Revolting Story just because – and I’ve realised that the one thing that’s utterly absent from my Hurricane Forever draft is what people are thinking.

I have what they say, what they do. I don’t have the whys, and I don’t have the ‘how they get theres.’

It worries me. Oh I’ve always had scenes that were just dialogue and nothing else.

But I’m pretty sure that the Hurricane Forever draft is nearly 50k of dialogue and nothing else.

Nadia was telling me about book journals the other day.

The idea is that you write a few lines about what you’re working on each day. Ideas you have for the next few scenes. Key things that you are currently working on in the novel. Stuff like that .

I wasn’t going to do one for The Molting. I planned to trial this with my next novel – not being keen to try this again so soon after the recent failure of January-in-February with journaling. But I felt the urge, and so, why not? If I don’t keep up, that’s okay too. It’s more important that I keep up with my story, after all.

If the only time I journal is today, well, at least I discovered that The Molting is sooperman’s story more than it is sooperwoman’s.

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2010-06-24T14:41:00.001+01:00

I used to feel guilty about the fact that I simply didn’t have the same interest in history other fantasists had.

I stole bits and pieces for worldbuilding as I came across them, but I never felt the need to go hunt them out. I read historical romances, but they invariably have Regency settings, a fondness I have courtesy of teenage years spent inhaling the likes of Johanna Lindsey and others.

But the reason is simple: my passion is the future, not the past.

And I shouldn’t feel guilty about it at all.

Farhan Manjoo at Fast Company:

These frosted-glass doors, and similar ones all around the world protecting other caves of Apple thinkers, are emblematic of Apple's fanaticism for secrecy. But those doors are more than mere paranoia. Apple sets its own agenda and tunes out the tech wags -- competitors, industry observers, analysts, bloggers, and journalists like myself -- who constantly spew torrents of advice, huzzahs, and brickbats in its direction. Behind its doors, Apple can ignore us all.

The article offers ten lessons other tech companies can learn from Apple.

I think that the one lesson a writer could learn from Apple is that you need to protect the work.

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2010-06-23T15:11:00.001+01:00

I have had enough local anesthesia and painkillers today to fell an elephant. Well, at least a baby elephant – I am a smaller than average human being.

I also now have to have gum surgery sometime in the near future, after which I will be able to say that I’ve had every kind of non-immediately-life-threatening (maybe non-life-threatening too) problem requiring some kind of dental treatment.

Bah.

My mama soothed my pains with 2 new pairs of shoes.

Life is better.

I have decided to rename The Molting to Molting the Revolting* in honor of a certain animal in it.

I am blaming my lack of progress today to the painkillers and anesthesia – see above – but the truth is I am suffering second-day jitters. This is after the initial euphoria of ‘OMG, something new!!!!’and just before ‘OMG, I’m in over my head!!!!’

*I’m kidding, but it does have a certain ring, don’t you think?

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The Mathematics of #agentpay : It's not a 5% increase, it's a 33 1/3 % increase! (tags: writing, publishing, agents, salary)

2010-06-23T13:58:00.001+01:00

Writers are often accused of being unable to do math. Writers propagate this belief with claims of ‘I’m a writer and therefore I can’t do math.’

It usually irritates me, but there are days when I think it’s true.

Today is one of them.

A friend sent me a link to Writer Beware:

So what's the answer, for agents and others who think the current system should change? A commission hike is the most obvious solution. During the 1980s and 1990s, US agents raised their commissions from 10% to 15%; it seems to me that an increase to 20% could be undertaken with relatively minimal pain on all sides. This would acknowledge the ways in which agenting has changed and expanded, but wouldn't unfairly burden writers.

Should the agent commission increase to 20%, the author pays the agent 5% more.

But an agent who’s getting 20% commission from all her/his clients is getting 33 1/3 % more overall compared to an agent who gets 15%.

This is the math:

20/15 = 1 1/3

It’s true that agents probably have to do more these days. But that holds for authors as well, and I don’t think we are getting paid any more.

As for the billable-hours suggestion, I do think I’d rather hire an entertainment lawyer to deal with contracts and such. With the deal in hand, it means that I will definitely be getting some money at some point.

Paying your agent by the hour simply does not incentivise your agent to sell your book quickly, or even at all. I suspect, though I cannot say for the sure, that the number of fraudsters will up and quickly should there be such a switch as well.

PS This is cross-posted to all four of my blogs. Feel free to comment anywhere you come across this post.

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2010-06-22T14:45:00.001+01:00

Kaz’s Summer Camp Week #3:

I finished my draft zero of Hurricane Forever – not the real title FYI – yesterday.

It is an awful draft. I’m so desperate to fix it that I sent it to two kind souls – Maili and Liz – who can store a copy so I can temporarily delete it off my hard drive. If they decide to peek, it’ll probably make their eyes bleed.

Hmm… Not sure if it’s a good idea to let people have blackmail material. But it is done.

Today, I started the short story, The Molting, that I was planning to write next month. I’m now hoping to finish it by 2^nd of July, as there’ll be wedding madness (thankfully not mine) from 3^rd-11^th of June, entailing flights and gowns and stuff.

Extract:

“You are very difficult, you know.”

“Coming from you? Who hired me to manage you so other people would find you easier to deal with?”

His mouth dropped open. “What did you just say?”

I already had a draft of the first section – so I’m now just revising what I had as I go along. That’s about 1300 words of revisions, and I’m about ready to take the leap into new material.

I only have new material because I had an epiphany this morning. But I’m pretty sure it can carry me through to the end in one draft, so that’s okay.

I talked to Elise Matthesen, who has kindly given me permission to use some of her beautiful work in The Molting.

I had an epiphany about it. It entails tossing out all the worldbuilding I did for it, but that’s okay.

I suspect it’s not quite fantasy any more though. Or SF, which might be an issue as I was going to use to ‘audition’ OWW.

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Draft

2010-06-21T13:50:00.001+01:00

So, I have a draft of Hurricane Forever.

It doesn’t actually feel like an accomplishment.

Right now, all I wanna do is revise it.

And yes, I did finish it less than 24 hours ago. Actually, maybe less than 12 even.

I’m actually itching so badly to revise it that I’ve actually had to send a copy to two wonderful, wonderful friends (@LizUK and @McVane) so I can delete it off my hard drive for the time being.

The thing is, it feels like it’s just the first step. I suppose it IS just the first step. I mean, it’s going to need at least two rounds of revisions before anybody gets to read it.

Or before anybody SHOULD read it. If I send it out before that, I’d be an idiot to let anybody, and I do mean anybody, see what a terrible writer I am.

Now, if only it didn’t give me this Insane urge to revise. NOW.

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2010-06-21T03:17:00.001+01:00

And it is done.

I would roll over and go to bed, but I’m not tired.

I didn’t expect to finish quite this quickly though.

But then, I wrote the last sentence and realised that the rest of the planned chapter would be superfluous.

I may actually unpack today.

To prevent myself from attacking Hurricane Forever with a red pen. That would serve no purpose here.

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2010-06-20T12:43:00.001+01:00

I hate my novel and I don’t care who knows it.

I have begun procrastinating.

Tomorrow, I expect to finish unpacking.

And by the end of the week, I expect to finish my cousin’s wedding sampler. WAAAAAAAAY ahead of schedule.

It does not help that I am about to be felled by the cold from hell.

I suspect that trying to prevent it from happening with an orange a day and lots of liquids has only put off the Inevitable.

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2010-06-18T23:13:00.001+01:00

At this point, I feel like Hurricane Forever will never ever ever ever end.

God help me.

I hate the weather.

And I’ve never suffered jet lag quite this spectacular.

I’ve slept days for two days in a row now. And when I say days? I mean days. Days as in 12 hour stretches of daylight, as we experience them practically on the Equator.

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2010-06-16T08:00:00.001+01:00

Heading off home.

God I'm tired. Definitely won't be doing any writing on this flight.

To be honest, I'm a little stuck.

But I am pretty sure I have a key called guilt.

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2010-06-15T18:28:00.001+01:00

This is my first post at Posterous.

If this works, it should show up at Blogger too.

My update for Kaz’s Summer Camp, Week #2:

I edited about 6k in from a previous draft and wrote about 3700 words too.

I'm a lot closer to the end then I thought I was.

Tonight's the big move. Eek.

Yes, I am leaving Life in the Cold and the Wet behind.

A snippet in honor of above:

She sat up, reached over, and hit him. Hard.

“What do you want?” he growled into the pillow.

“Sex. Conversation. The naked man next to me transforming back into my doting husband. Just to name a few things.”

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2010-06-15T18:26:00.002+01:00

This is my first post at Posterous.

If this works, it should show up at Blogger too.

My update for Kaz’s Summer Camp, Week #2:

I edited about 6k in from a previous draft and wrote about 3700 words too.

I'm a lot closer to the end then I thought I was.

Tonight's the big move. Eek.

Yes, I am leaving Life in the Cold and the Wet behind.

A snippet in honor of above:

She sat up, reached over, and hit him. Hard.

“What do you want?” he growled into the pillow.

“Sex. Conversation. The naked man next to me transforming back into my doting husband. Just to name a few things.”

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2010-06-13T23:07:00.000+01:00

1.

Terrible weather.

A perfect day for leave taking.

Is it wrong that it was easy? It feels like it shouldn't have been.

2.

I hate packing. I would say that I'm never going to move again, but that would definitely be a lie.

3.

I am on track to finish Hurricane Forever by the end of the month. I'm progressing faster -- plotwise -- than I thought I would.

2010-06-12T02:05:00.001+01:00

1.

I thought I should post an update, though there is little to say.

2.

Indeed, I have had little to write, only about a thousand words since Tuesday.

3.

At some point I will need to go back and edit a chunk of words I wrote in WriteWay a few months back, and slot it in.

In fact, I think I'll just do it now, and then go to bed.

It'll bump up my word count by about 11k, but I'm slotting it in primarily for continuity's sake. It fits in chronologically, and I am not yet sure that if any of it will make it into the final version.

ETA: Actually, a lot less than that. About 6k. Some of the scenes, I already rewrote in.

2010-06-08T18:52:00.003+01:00

1.

First update for Kaz's Summer Camp.

2.

From Hurricane Forever:

The older man’s face flushed, in renewed anger. “I won’t be your pawn.”
“You already are, and if you do not act, you will only remain a pawn.”

3.

I'm just past the 100 page milestone -- I don't write in manuscript format, but 14pt Corbel spaced 1.15.

Somehow this is more monumental than the 35k I'm nearing.

2010-06-04T20:05:00.001+01:00

1.

Still slow going.

2.

Thinking about what I do know about my sooper woman.

And realising that I made her weak.

She is strong because she fights for her beliefs, and her belief is absolute.

3.

Haven't started anything for June yet.

But I want to finish at least an entire row on Mother Maya first.

4.

Incidentally, I'm giving away a copy of Tabitha Suzuma's Forbidden on my other blog.

2010-06-02T17:37:00.002+01:00

1.

I'm doing Summer Camp with Karen Mahoney.

My goals are:

At some point, I need to start my Sooper Sekrit Projekt with Nadia Lee. We are sacrificing blood, sweat and time, in order to achieve World Domination. Stay tuned.

June:
Finish Hurricane Forever. About another 20-30k.

July:
Ignore Hurricane Forever.
Pretty sure this will be the most difficult one, but this is the most important goal for July. If I don't complete the others, I guess I'll have had my first real writing vacation in I-don't-know-when.
Write a short story, maybe 10k.
Fiddle with my would-be magnum opus.

August:
Write a synopsis for something. I don't care what, so long it's not Hurricane Forever or my would-be magnum opus. I just want to have something for my underbrain to chew over whilst I revise Hurricane Forever.

You can sign up until June 8th.

2.

I'm at 31k, or so.

A little stuck, but we'll get there.

Solitude

2010-05-31T22:52:00.001+01:00

1.

Leo Babauta:

The No. 1 Creativity Habit
In a word: solitude.
Creativity flourishes in solitude. With quiet, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourself, you can focus.
Of course, there are lots of ways to find this solitude.

Via @ThereseWalsh.

2.

Only when one is alone can one find quiet. Silence.

Without which, you cannot truly hear or see or feel. Take your pick.

The story you want to tell cannot reveal itself to you until you are ready to listen.

3.

This ties in with the idea of deliberate practice, or whatever you want to call it.

It is easier to write, to practice the musical instrument of your choice, to draw, to sculpt, you name it, when you are alone.

But people are not the only distractions. The internet, for instance, now that nearly every writer seems to work mostly from a computer. Twitter is a useful tool, to be certain, but it could just as easily have been called Distraction Central.

4.

I consider the distractions to be separate from the procrastinations.

The procrastinations are things you do to avoid seeking out that solitude. Cleaning seems to be rather popular, which I don't understand, but I suppose if you're desperately avoiding something, cleaning's probably better than TV.

I admit my favorite procrastination is reading, as I always have a crazy amount of reading to catch up on anyway.

5.

Either way, there are things out there that try to prevent us from reaching that space.

The trick is to rise above it. Because it is necessary.

Sheer, desperate desire helps, though it can also hinder.

It's easy enough to lock yourself into a room. It's much harder to find true solitude, to find the space where you can create.

Sometimes, one can go crazy trying to find that space, and yet, without that space, we'd probably be crazier.

2010-05-29T20:22:00.001+01:00

1.

30k. Whoot!

2.

Actually, 31k.

2010-05-28T22:36:00.001+01:00

1.

I hate getting ahead of myself, I really do.

Now I have to go back and stitch things back up together.

I can't believe I forgot such a major plotline. Bah.

2.

This will probably jinx me but I have not forgotten to refer to myself as Emily rather than anything else for awhile.

3.

I hate writing action scenes.

I really really do.

I told @redrobinreader I'd attempt some fancy paper art with sharp objects and paper silk. I may make a model and people cut-outs and see where that takes me. But anyway, I've skipped the rest of the action scenes, and will write the pivotal scene so I can continue on.

That should take me past 30k!

Quilts 1700-2010

2010-05-27T20:04:00.000+01:00

1.

First, I want to say this isn't as well-written or as in depth as it should be.

But then, I didn't plan on procrastinating this quite this long either.

2.

Quilts commemorate stuff. That seemed to be a central theme of the exhibit anyway.

3.

The other central theme is that Quilts tell a story. I guess Paperback Writer had it right.

The story about the quilt the V&A commissioned from prisoners at a British museum, in particular, stands out. It has finer stitches that I could achieve, I am almost ashamed to say.

4.

I really want Diana Harrison's Box I and II.

Gail Baxter writes and has pictures of them.

5.

On Twitter, I mocked the idea that a Scripture quilt could protect one from illness.

But now I look at it in a different way.

A handmade quilt as protection. As something to snuggle up under. It's a different kind of protection, for one's heart and soul, but protection all the same.

6.

I don't normally go for the ones that try to make a statement about the world, but I really liked Stockwell's money quilt.

It is called A Chinese Dream, and here's what the artist has to say about it:

I’ve stitched and crafted almost 1000 Chinese money notes into a
patterned, quilted map of the world. Like most of my work the piece
refers to trade, ecology, the present economic crisis and the shifting
global economy. For me personally it’s a beautiful, hand-made quilt
stemming from a tradition of women recycling old clothes, passing on
keepsakes and sharing in a familial process that transcends generations.
Ironically the ritual processes involved in making a quilt seem to
counter the crassness of money and consumerism.

7.

There's more stuff at the Victoria & Albert Museum page for the exhibit here.

Thanks to Jacqueline Holdsworth of Needleprint for the recommendation!

8.

Despite my love of geometries, quilting never really interested me. Too much effort -- like making thousands of little stitches on linen isn't effort...

But now I really want to learn flat quilting. Go figure.

2010-05-25T23:03:00.001+01:00

1.

I really should write up the Quilts 1700-2010 exhibition I went to at the Victoria & Albert.

2.

I've never felt this defeated.

Not even with my novels, not even the ones that I have consigned to a place so deep, that they may never see the light of day.

I can't even bring myself to think about it any more.

3.

Writing was never an escape for me, not the way it seems to have been for so many of my fellow writers.

It was just something I did. I wanted to be a writer, enough to earn the discipline.

Now it feels like all I have left, and I don't even know how I got here.

Breathe

2010-05-24T20:56:00.001+01:00

1.

Or why so many writers/artists are addicted to one thing or another.

2.

As I write this, I have just finish somewhat more than a third of a bottle of wine.

I currently weigh little more than 40kg, 6.3 stone or 89 pounds.

One third of a bottle of wine is quite a lot for me. My record stands at three-quarters, but I weighed at least 5-6 -- and probably more -- kilograms then.

3.

The conversation went...

Guy: Wait a minute! If the both of you had a small glass, then it must mean she's had something like three-quarters of the bottle!

Me: Yup! I'm feeling really happy right now!

4.

Today's the first day in many, many days that I've felt like I could breathe.

Just breathe, and not worry about anything else. I feel almost weightless, and I haven't felt like this in I-don't-know-how-long.

5.

I know it's a slippery path I'm on, the path to addiction.

But some days, I just can't help myself.

2010-05-20T23:19:00.001+01:00

1.

I am alive.

I think I want to be alive, but I am uncertain as to whether this is absolutely the case.

2.

I have not been on my laptop since Sunday afternoon.

I do not think I've ever been away from my laptop quite this long.

Or from a novel that was going this well.

3.

I'm reading through Hurricane Forever again, before I pick up my metaphorical pen. I may need to cut what I have of the last scene I have on file, but that's acceptable.

4.

What's rather less acceptable is my magnum opus.

I had to switch Books II and III around, and change the ending off Book I somewhat.

Which basically means I need to cut somebody completely out of Hurricane Forever as well as the corresponding plotlines.

Bah.

2010-05-13T16:33:00.001+01:00

1.

Thinking of getting this blog done up right. Talking to Parajunkee Designs. If you have any other suggestions, please do let me know.

Incidentally, I am now at Posterous.

There will be different content over there for the foreseeable future.

2.

I'm writing about 2 pages -- about 500 words a day. Since the start of May, which means a nice 7k or so.

The next few days will be slow. I'm writing a rousing declaration of war. Note to self: Bush II must have made some speeches about the War on Terror, and I must study them to see what he did right/wrong at some point. Probably should consider Churchill and a few others too.

3.

I'm playing EchoBazaar. Possibly the greatest waste of time on Earth, but I need to sorta disappear from a few places online and therefore I need a new obsession.

Unwriting

2010-05-12T16:07:00.001+01:00

I refuse to call it writer's block.

But I do experience periods of time that I call unwriting.

During those periods, I simply do not write.

Hence, unwriting.

They aren’t a lot of fun. I have had 'Write every day' bopped into my head every day since I began six years ago -- OMG six years ago!

There is a TED video in which Elizabeth Gilbert says it is freeing to acknowledge a higher power in your creative work.

And I guess in a way, it's true.

But all things are best in moderation.

Sarah Monette:

Treating writer's block as (1) monolithic and (2) reified--I have WRITER'S BLOCK! Woe! Woe is me for I cannot write!--only makes it harder to figure out what the problem is. It also feeds into a number of toxic myths about writing, which we may call either Shelley's Revenge or the Hemingway Trap, depending on whether we want to see it as yet another hangover of Romanticism or as the thing that killed Hemingway. But the idea that creativity controls the writer--which is EXACTLY the idea behind the pernicious anthropomorphism of The
Muse--cannot help but lead to mystification and reification of writer's block, turning it from a problem into an insurmountable, career-ending disaster.

I'm personally inclined to agree with Ms Monette -- she of the Mirador quartet -- as opposed to Ms Gilbert.

I've been a more consistent writer since I gave up the idea of having a Muse -- which I took to ridiculous heights involving multiple neuroses in my late teens.

I try, as much as I can, to consider the time spent away from writing to be an investment.

Time to find mind fodder for your under mind and time for your under mind to chew through that mind fodder.

It's hard, when you're struggling and especially when you're facing a deadline.

Sitting there and banging your head on the wall isn't always a solution either. It's right in front of you, mocking you. If anything, it's a waste of time, and worse, I suspect it sometimes makes things worse.

The guilt, the self-recrimination...that's the worst, isn't it?

I suck. I'm such a terrible writer. Why do I even bother? This is such a waste of time!

But here's the thing: it's only a waste of time if you quit, and if you quit, you will always be a terrible writer.

2010-05-10T14:56:00.001+01:00

1.

Word by word, Hurricane Forever becomes increasingly...I hesitate to use the term political, but that's as good a word as any.

2.

I need a new name for my 'race.' Talk about a giant pain in the ass.

3.

I've begun working the first of the reproduction samplers I plan to stitch in red, henceforth known as The Girls in Red.

Meet Miss Rhoda Morley.

It is the biggest Bristol reproduction sampler I've seen anywhere, which I did not know when it became the first and only Bristol sampler that I have fallen in love with.

She will hopefully soon have companions Miss Metta Putfarckens and Miss Eliza Trusted.

2010-05-09T16:57:00.000+01:00

1.

Hurricane Forever has 5 sections.

I've just now completed the second one.

2.

I'm trying to work out what I'm going to do next.

The third section was always the most squishy one. I have an idea of what happens. The title of the novel -- the real title and not my 'Trying To Be Funny' title -- comes from the concept of the third section.

The concept being distinct from the plot because I am terribly, terribly complicated.

3.

I have a suspicion I may have to read the 9/11 Commission Report for this. Now, ladies and gentleman, that's what I call dedication to my art.

2010-05-08T17:47:00.001+01:00

1.

I am uncertain as to whether I'm madder at my body or my mind right now.

2.

I'm taking a trip back in time in Hurricane Forever.

It's kind of nice. I think I'm going to have another one of those 'OH! So that's why....' moments after I finish.

3.

I'm thinking of taking another trip back in time.

I have a few vignettes that happen before my magnum opus's timeline. I'm thinking of expanding them with a more erotic flavor.

I blame Nadia Lee for erotic flavor bit.

4.

I'm moving my stuff to DropBox. For one reason or another but primarily because Ovi Files kept giving me fits. :P Do sign up via my link so we both get an extra 250mb, though why I need the extra space, I don't know.

5.

I have started Sampler Cove's Thriller.

If you don't click on the link, here's the verse on the sampler:

Moonlight casts an eerie glow
in shadows terror hides
Searching for the haunted souls
On wicked wings she rides

It is definitely not what I planned to start this month, but I did kit it up completely from stash. I used up the remaining Spyro Aida I had, and the floss is from the mountain of silk I ordered with a bunch of pals a few months back, which is quite the accomplishment. More so than actually starting it.

Principles

2010-05-07T18:07:00.001+01:00

1.

Karen Knows Best:

I know that authors should really write what they love, but what if what they love doesn’t sell? It’s ok if money isn’t an issue for said author, but what if, as in Sharon’s case, it is? Should she really be expected to stick to her principles, and keep churning out inter-racial romances, that have a limited audience in the market place?

I don't have much patience for this kind of talk.

The way I see it, you can starve, or you can get a job that will feed you.

It is that simple.

2.

All that crap about principles? Is just crap.

If you're that hungry, you'll do anything to be fed.

I don't know about you, but I'd say that writing the type of book that will sell and sell well is better than having to find a non-writing job for most writers*.

It is a risk. The new book in that hot new genre might not sell. Frankly, I would judge the probability that it will not be as good as the author's previous work to be quite high too. Talent and craft is no substitute for heart**.

3.

Shiloh Walker later said in the comments that it's not about principles, it's about business.

I agree, and it makes me want to shoot people when they say stuff like they wish they could be paid to sit at home all day and write. Who's going to pay them, I don't know.

4.

I've taken flack before because I don't have the kind of background that will make me understand.

For goodness sake! You're studying economics!

I'll never forget seeing that 'screamed' across a chat room a few years back.

But that was a conscious decision I made. I don't want to be one of those writers who, ten-fifteen years down the road, have no money and need to raise funds for medical treatment.

I read a very select few author blogs. Do you know how many cries for help I have read about in the past few years? Enough to be sure that I never ever want to be at the mercy of strangers.

5.

What bugs me the most is how some writers seem to take pride in the fact that they are living in a little hovel, starving for their art.

Somehow, it seems to make them think that they are 'truer' to their art, because they are sacrificing.

And I suppose they are.

But the idea that you're going to write better because you living hand-to-mouth in an awful little apartment...

*opens the window and screams*

* I make this point because I would personally rather find a non-writing job.

** My favorite example of this is Tina St. John, whose historicals are far better than the vampire novels she has published as Lara Adrian.

2010-05-07T15:59:00.001+01:00

1.

I am uncertain as to whether I'm madder at my body or my mind right now.

2.

I'm taking a trip back in time in Hurricane Forever.

It's kind of nice. I think I'm going to have another one of those 'OH! So that's why....' moments after I finish.

3.

I'm thinking of taking another trip back in time.

I have a few vignettes that happen before my magnum opus's timeline. I'm thinking of expanding them with a more erotic flavor.

I blame Nadia Lee for erotic flavor bit.

4.

Also, I'm moving my stuff to DropBox. For one reason or another but primarily because Ovi Files kept giving me fits. :P

2010-05-04T15:04:00.001+01:00

1.

I've updated my synopsis some. Re-worked some key points.

I think the storyline could work as things stand, but I'm sure things will change.

2.

I've just hit the 20k mark, which is a nice little milestone.

In terms of plot, I'm just about hit the meat of the book. Which will be nice because I haven't gotten this far before with a first draft. Which is a more significant milestone, if you ask me.

3.

It's May. I need to contemplate The Year of Starts again. Thinking of starting Rhoda Morley, unless I get my act together enough to find a decent pair of scissors in this house to cut the fabric for Metta Putfarckens.

I hardly stitched last month. I doubt this month will be much better.

4.

The war of being is not going so well.

Sometimes I wish I could take out a piece of my psyche, swap it out for a better, less dented version made of titanium that will not rust or corrode and is sturdy enough to take a few hits.

2010-04-25T19:32:00.001+01:00

1.

I am still on the wrong continent.

2.

Hurricane Forever is also still on the wrong continent. I thought my sooperwoman would already be in her new home by now. Bah.

3.

I started Northern Expression's Celtic Leaves. Such a lovely piece.

But I desperately need to either stop talking about my needlework on this blog, or to somehow reconcile this identity with my other online identity.

The latter would be preferable, but I am also certain that it is a problem to which there is no solution.

4.

I think my Monday posts are going on temporary hiatus until I get my act together to start blogging again. It makes me feel very lazy, but hey, I am very lazy.

2010-04-20T17:15:00.001+01:00

1.

I rather think I've been neglecting this blog for too long.

But I did try to return to the UK, got stuck in Dubai and decided to return to Singapore, so I do sort of have an excuse.

2.

Dubai is an inspiration.

It is what I imagine a charter city that's run out of money would look like.

Certainly, it does not meet the definition of a charter city. But the point of a charter city is that build it, and they will come.

They came, they saw, they left.

3.

I ran into a stop for most of the last week.

But it's kick-started again.

The first time in my life that my synopsis has actually helped me.

2010-04-12T16:53:00.001+01:00

1.

Working on Hurricane Forever. It is going wonderfully well.

2.

No 'actual' post today because I'm a nitwit, and I'm a nitwit who is extremely busy.

I did try. But I think anything I put up would be worse than last week's Monday post, which was generally a waste of time altogether.

3.

I do need to start something for this month, however, and I really ought to do it soon.

2010-04-10T16:12:00.001+01:00

1.

Slightly tipsy.

Drowning my sorrows of at least a month's worth of endodontic treatment.

2.

Hurricane Forever is going quite well, thank you very much.

I'm simultaneously editing section 1 and writing section 2. It seems to be a combination that works well for me.

BUT I've discovered that I'm shitty at writing scenes with more than three people. Hell, more than three people.

3.

I suspect I have an ending for Hurricane Forever too, which is rather nice.

2010-04-07T11:22:00.001+01:00

1.

The novel formerly known as TLOL is now officially Hurricane Forever.

Because I think I'm funny.

2.

Thinking about allegories in my work.

They never used to exist, but now I see them left and right.

I think that will probably be the topic of my next Monday post. This week's one was pretty crappy and I apologize for that.

3.

Hurricane Forever is going surprisingly well. My current process (well, my current planned process anyway) is to write the novel and add comments to the synopsis as I go along to fix things.

So far so good.

Previously, all the clay was just random lumps. This time it's like I put the clay into the mold, popped it out, and am now reshaping it a bit.

2010-04-06T16:02:00.001+01:00

1.

I have given up on WriteWayPro for now.

It's both flexible and not flexible enough.

2.

Here's a paradox for you.

The story that my heart would like to write is a grand story of great love and great tragedy.

The story that my mind would like to write is a novel on the rise and fall of nations, cultures etc.

This is the fundamental conflict that drives and hinders my writing.

Reading

2010-04-05T05:32:00.001+01:00

Nadia says that I shouldn’t blog about the books I’ve read, or not read, as the case maybe.

My DNF rate last month is over 20%, probably closer to 30% – out of 15-20 books read. So basically, I was really mean in January.

Or maybe the books I thought would be good to read were really really bad.

2.

The problem is probably not the books.

The problem is probably me.

I need to stop looking at novels like they are vitamins.

Good for me, take 1 a day.

I just have very little patience for fiction lately.

I read because I crave mental stimulation. The best to drive me insane is probably to lock me up in a room with nothing to do.

But most novels don’t seem to do that any more. Short stories are like popcorn, light, fluffy and not substantial at all.

I want that substance. Not in terms of size or heft, but something for the various bits and pieces of my brain to chew on.

I signed up to be a guest reviewer for Book Chick City anyway. Why not, right?

Plus, I like to talk about books. That’s why I used to review books online and read reviewer blogs and stuff like that.

Maybe if I talked more about what I was reading, it would kick-start me out of this slump. Though, at this point, it feels like it’d require nuclear fission to do that.

2010-04-03T14:03:00.001+01:00

1.

This post is brought to you by ScribeFire for Firefox. As opposed to Windows Live Writer.

I do miss the many keyboard shortcuts that WLW had though. Like Ctrl+Shift+C to open up categories, and the ability to have it remember links, so when I mention Nadia, for instance, it'll link to her website automatically.

Especially since most of them don't work.

2.

In my attempts to procrastinate all things synopsis/studying, I have switched my choice of browsers from Chrome to Firefox and have decided to delete Opera completely from my laptop's consciousness.

This is followed by me jazzing it up, with Echofon -- I really want something that has Reply All and immediate shortening of URL and ability to change views with a keyboard shortcut -- and Scribefire, to be followed by something for an RSS Aggregator and something I can use for Gmail when I can't connect with Outlook.

3.

I'm also currently contemplating putting an end to my attempts to finish my synopsis as it is clearly going nowhere.

But I think I'm going to see whether I can dig up one of those list things for the Three Act Structure, which asks you stuff like inciting event, climax, etc.

This I'll input into Excel, with each of those items on the left column, and Acts I, II and III across. Because in every Act, those items ought to link up somehow.

2010-04-03T03:36:00.001+01:00

Support rape crisis centers and enter to win an Advance Copy of Red Hood’s Revenge, by Jim C. Hines.

2010-03-31T11:34:00.001+01:00

I just want this damn synopsis to be done.

I can’t remember if I tried this before or not, with TLOL, but I’m pretty sure I have.

I am nearly at the end.

That’s what’s making it so frustrating.

Thinking about how I’ll start over. Probably not with WriteWayPro which has been crashing lately and irritating me and breaking my flow when I have one.

And you know how it is with Murphy. It only crashes when I’m in the flow.

I may have to start calling WriteWayPro Murphy, at this rate.

Bah.

Process

2010-03-29T13:41:00.003+01:00

My process involves a lot more thinking and waiting for things to piece themselves together in my little head than I would like.

So I spend a lot of time moaning about how if my writing process was more like how I work out the rest of my life, the world would be a better place for me.

Elizabeth Bear:

I've been meaning to blog for a while on writing-related topics, but you know, the funny thing is, as I get better at this writing gig, it gets harder to find things to talk about. One is that historically I've always blogged about what I was learning, and these days, while I am still learning about writing (and I imagine I always will be) the writing curve is a lot flatter, and a lot more of the skills have moved into the realm of unconscious competence. I can still tap into that knowledge when teaching, editing, or critting, but I'm no longer having to work it out for my own self on a daily basis.
And the stuff I am having to work out is much more arcane and of more limited application.

I’ve tried several times to rephrase this analogy in a more compact way with less back-story, but I’m afraid we’re stuck with this rather clunky one.

My undergraduate education has been in economics, with a focus on econometrics; for those of you who are not so well-acquainted with the dismal science, you may substitute statistics for econometrics.

There are lots of formulas. There are lots of proofs you have to go through to understand why those formulas work (kind of). There are lots and lots of criteria as to when and where you can use those formulas. Lots of little bits you must weigh in the pros/cons columns and then decide what your final method will be.

So finally, you can have a long, erudite and technically complex argument as to why you have done it one way rather than another in your study, but really, it boils down intuition as much as anything else.

It’s the same thing with writing, I bet.

There’s only so much you can learn by reading what other people have written on the subject – or taught etc.

There’s so much more to learn by doing. And so much of learning by doing you cannot learn by having it taught to you.

Recently, I taught a friend to cross-stitch. I bought everything, the chart, fabric, thread, needle and frame.

I sat her down, and gave her the basics. I barely managed to restrain myself to the basics. I itched to discuss railroading, linen vs Aida, cotton vs silk, stretch frame vs scroll frame vs Q-snaps vs hoop vs in-hand.

At its very basic, cross-stitch is simply the physical act of making little crosses with needle and thread on a ground (fabric).

Similarly, writing is stringing words together. A monkey could do it. But it doesn’t mean a monkey could do it well.

There are lessons to be learnt each day in doing, and each day in doing, one internalises both those lessons and the lessons one has learnt from classes, critiques etc.

That internalising is what makes for effortless excellence.

2010-03-26T12:59:00.002Z

I have achieved a new title for TLOL.

*hugs it to herself*

It’s probably not as cool as I think it is, but I’ll let myself believe it for a little longer.

Writing the synopsis has helped me think a bit more about everything that I want inside it.

More importantly, how it all coalesces – writerly moment about pretty word here! – together.

That’s more important than the pieces, IMHO.

And that’s it for today because I’m already well on my way to RSI.

2010-03-25T03:54:00.001Z

Watched 2012 flying into Dubai.

I never really understand why people consider ruthlessness to be such a bad thing.

I’m very tired of movies with simplistic plots. ‘nuff said.

I am writing a synopsis for TLOL.

Which still needs a new title.

Introversion

2010-03-22T23:08:00.001Z

I think that a writer complaining about having to promote oneself despite being an introvert is a cop out.

I’m not surprised that most writers are introverted. It is a job where one spends a great deal of time alone. In the long-run, it’s probably a benefit.

But I see being a people-person as being more of a facet of one’s personality. It’s almost like a muscle. It must be stretched and worked and then you’ll end up with something more.

My greatest achievement in my three years of university isn’t learning to live on my own, much less my degree – such as things stand at the moment.

It’s strengthening my people-person muscle to the point where most of the people I know think I’m pretty extroverted.

After all, I’m always out and about, and the first to accept an invitation to head out with people.

Sometimes, I over-extend myself. In which case, I grit my teeth and get on with it if I have to, and cancel if I can.

I wasn’t going to post this today. I had something else in mind.

Then I came across this post on Jay Lake’s blog, which sent me to this post by Jessica Reisman.

I think Reisman has a point. I think on average, it’s better to be an extrovert than an introvert if you want to achieve something that requires a great deal of public (defined as other than friends & family) approval.

At least, it just might be easier.

Commemorate

2010-03-17T13:09:00.001Z

I know of 2 people who’ve actually read what I’ve posted on this blog.

One is @GirrlitsBooks – who’s commented a couple of times and the other is Alison Kent, who kindly linked to my post yesterday.

So to commemorate that event, I’m going to run a contest.

I’ll buy a lucky winner a copy of any Alison Kent novel, provided that I can get them through Fictionwise or the Book Depository, and provided the geographic restrictions (DRM or postage) in both cases are met.

I can choose for you – I think I’ve read upwards of three-quarters of what she’s published solo (as in not in anthology) – or you can have your pick.

Ways to enter:

Comment here on this post.
Follow me on Blogger.
Follow @emilycardinal on Twitter.
Retweet my contest
Email me – I won’t keep your email address for mailing lists or anything like that – with Contest in the subject line.

You can do any and all of them.

But here’s a bonus: if you do all 5, you get double the entries. And as there are very few people who read this blog, if you get double the entries, you’ll probably win.

The contest ends this Sunday. If you win and you entered by 1, 2 or 5, I’ll email you, otherwise, Twitter it is.

Good luck!

Immersion

2010-03-15T12:36:00.002Z

I’m a write-every-day kind of writer.

It took me three years to earn that kind of discipline, and I’ll be damned if I let it disintegrate now.

But I think it’s not really about writing-every-day.

It’s about Thinking About The Work every day, because it’s what keeps you ‘plugged into your work’. Sort of, if your novel’s a ‘flow,’ then it’s just easier to tap into it if you do it every day.

Pretty sure some people can do it without writing every day, but I’m also pretty sure it’s easier just to write every day – barring time constraints, of course.

I started one of my old blogs to keep my hand in, so to speak. Just to make sure that I wrote something every day.

It kind of worked. I wrote every day, though I didn’t post usually post what I wrote the same day – it got to a point where I was writing my posts up to a week or more in advance because I just blogged, blogged, blogged.

On the other hand, it was the perfect procrastination-from-fiction tool*, because I could tell myself ‘I’m still writing.’

But I wasn’t.

If there’s anything similar to blogging, it might be writing vignettes and other types of short-form fiction. They are like doing the hundred meter dash every day, just on different athletic tracks – somebody will probably want to smack me for this analogy, but I don’t write short-form at all so forgive me.

Novels are marathons. Plod plod plod.

Actually, strike that.

Novels are more like obstacle courses. Sometimes you run into a wall, a mud pit, something you have to climb over, or crawl under…

You need to deal with them, and you need to deal with each of them intelligently. You don’t want to expend more effort than necessary, but sometimes, you gotta bring out the bulldozers.

But here’s the thing. Books are organic objects, whether you’re a plotter or not.

If you dig up something to dump it and you dig it up by the roots? It’ll jostle the foundations of the rest of your constructions.

I think only if you’re truly immersed in your book can you see the rough edges, sand them off, and put the pieces back together to form a new pattern.

So breathe your work. Dream of it. Wallow in it. Hold it deep within your heart.

Immerse yourself.

2010-03-14T13:25:00.002Z

I tend to blog a lot on Sundays. Hmm…

I’m unwriting again. Bah.

But I did read over what I have today, and I see that I’ve begun the slow process of jargonizing TLOL.

Jargonizing probably isn’t a good term for it. More along the lines of my worldbuilding is beginning to actually appear inside what I’ve already written.

Kinda, I think it is beginning to be recognizable as the world that exists in my head.

I am working on Nadia’s wedding sampler again.

I did finish The Charleston. I’ll put up a picture of that at some point. Probably means when I get back to Singapore later this month.

I need to contemplate what I’ll be starting in May, June and July. The Year of Starts! Whoot!

I should probably post about my trip to the Macclesfield Silk Museum yesterday, but somehow, I just can’t be bothered.

2010-03-09T14:36:00.001Z

It is quiet in my head today. But then, I’ve had 2 1k days in 3 days so I guess that’s to be expected. Hopefully it means I’ll get a lot of other work done today.

I reduced my word count from 100k to 90k.

My original projection for Act I was 20k, but I’ve actually only written about 7.5k.

I managed to cut through all the backstory, which exists in my head and which I sincerely pray that I do not forget, with a nifty trick, if I do say so myself.

Joely and Nadia say that I should just continue. But the temptation to fix Act I first? Is nearly strong enough to overwhelm my Willpower.

Still, I’ve managed to actually start Act II.

This is when Sooperwoman and Sooperman settle down into some kind of relationship. It’s either going to be the easiest Act to write, or the hardest. I’m betting on the latter because Act I was okay except for the part where I cut half of it – a number that was not near enough to 5 digits to make me cry.

Joy.

2010-03-08T22:04:00.001Z

I’ll try to post something more substantial than my metrics at least once a week.

Tentatively, I’m going to schedule something for every Monday, and then we’ll see.

Commitment

2010-03-08T13:16:00.001Z

Starting a book is a commitment.

It’s a commitment to telling a story.

And it’s like getting married.

You work at it, you cry over it, and you scream at it. You fight with it, you love it, and you want to kill it.

You don’t give up, unless the alternative is a billion times worse.

If you do quit, if you do decide that it’s not worth it any more, you may feel guilty.

But you also feel incredibly relieved. Which possibly makes you feel even more guilty.

Whether you quit or not, your self-worth takes a hit, because you must have done so many/everything wrong otherwise it would have been much easier…right?

*Inspired by Nadia’s recent marriage to Evil Hero Material, henceforth known as her better half. *g*

2010-03-07T01:15:00.001Z

I have partially solved my twenty-years in 80k words problem.

At least, I’ve solved the first part. I haven’t gotten to the second part yet.

Not sure what this means. Maybe I should just leave the first section as it is, and proceed to the second.

Or print out the first, clean it up, and move on.

My epiphany came late, so the earlier words I already wrote need to be drastically re-written anyway.

Fuck. Now I’m up at 0115 when I was supposed to be asleep hours ago.

2010-03-06T18:45:00.001Z

I want to write a book with wizards in it.

I am not, however, going through a Harry Potter phase.

But wizards! Funny hats! Beautifully embroidered robes!

My sooperwoman’s mind is like a fortress. I can’t see into it at all.

There are scenes when you just know that they are meant to be written in her POV, but you can’t. So you either you skip it – which I generally try to avoid – or you write it in some other POV, which just feels wrong – which I also generally try to avoid.

So it’s making it difficult for me to write.

I need to think about patterns. It’s something that should have come to mind earlier, given that I sew, but it didn’t and I feel like a million times an idiot for it.

I’m not really making my daily minimum goals. It’s more like not writing, not writing, not writing, and bang! make up for several days at once.

Futuristic

2010-03-01T23:01:00.001Z

My current novels are set somewhat in the future.

I’m not sure that I know how to deal with that.

After an urban war, I can’t imagine that any city would look the same again.

I thought that would make it easier for me, to set it in London.

It hasn’t, really. Especially when one of my brighter ideas was to have Imperial College, London ‘reused’ as some other kind of building – Imperial being only an example, but I had/have plans for other university buildings in London and other cities.

Maybe not after all.

There’s the technology. It’s not something I really thought about at the time, when I decided to pick up the story wholesale and set it down fifty years later.

I was writing a scene today and I wrote about the books that filled the shelves of my sooperwoman.

Then it occurs to me that maybe she doesn’t have books. Real books, that is. And it’s ironic that I wrote that because I love ebooks more than I do print.

The structure of the sexual relationships is surprisingly archaic.

At some point, said sooperwoman becomes sooperman’s mistress. The stereotypical Other Woman.

In sooperman’s circles, pretty much all marriages are contracted for politico-economic reasons. In regular people circles in the same part of the world, it’s usually because the couple is genetically compatible.

Sooperman’s marriage, in particular, was contracted because of the first, though the latter also held true.

Then in the next section, which begins a minimum of 20-30 years after this one, the pendulum swings the other way. All the other way.

I think when you’re writing something like that, at some point, your past/present will collide with the future you are creating.

In my construct – a term I prefer to world – reincarnation is a continuous process, and given certain conditions, each person (character? damn. this gets confusing sometimes) remembers all of their past(s). So that collision happens almost constantly.

I don’t know how to handle that either.

January-in-February

2010-02-28T21:15:00.001Z

1-2-3 was not a disaster, in terms of discipline. I mostly kept up with it.

I do think it’s a disaster in terms of what I got out of it.

Which I think is nothing.

I already have an account that I set up to email my entries to. I’ll try to 1-2-3 when the mood strikes me.

Just don’t think it’ll be very often.

2010-02-27T21:29:00.001Z

I hate wanting to write but not yet being ready to write.

2010-02-26T23:57:00.001Z

I cut half of what I had in two days.

Because I wasn’t brave enough to do it all in one.

Things started picking up speed again yesterday.

Today was 788 words.

I like the number 88. It looks like two infinity signs rotated 90 degrees.

I also sent off something to someone. So we’ll see how that goes.

I’m not sure that I’m going to continue with 1-2-3.

I’m not sure if I should.

2010-02-20T23:17:00.001Z

Little plot arcs! Everywhere!

I can feel the climax building and building and building. I can actually see where I am going.

I’m into the third chapter now. :)

And tomorrow, I will most probably hit the 5k mark – which would mean that I’ve been writing, on average, double the 250 minimum I hope to meet each day.

Today was the first 1k day of this draft of TLOL. That’s always a nice milestone to meet.

The Twitter people who told me I was crazy for trying to cram 20 years worth of plot into 80-90k? They are still probably right, but I shall try anyway.

1-2-3 is going surprisingly well. It’s so much a part of my schedule now that I was planning to do them tonight too.

I might do that. The thing is, I can’t tell if the heebie-jeebies started because I started 1-2-3. So maybe they aren’t so good for me.

Focus

2010-02-19T22:04:00.001Z

Some people call it in the zone. Writers like Justine Lee Musk call it ‘writing deep.’

In one of my favourite books, S.L. Viehl’s Blade Dancer, a trainer at the assassin school the protagonists are studying at comments that Sajora (I don’t have the book with me, so it might be Jakol instead) has found the ‘sword within herself’ (again, the book’s not with me, so this is most probably a paraphrase.

For me, it boils down to this: Don’t Think, Just Do.

This latest exam period, I discovered just how difficult some people find it to reach that state of mind, and how much more difficult many people find it to stay there.

You need to push.

For some people, it’s all rather Zen.

I think of it as The Push – I suspect this I stole from Lilith Saintcrow’s The Society series, because one of the protagonists is able to ‘push’ people into doing stuff.

Having said all that, I tend to think of life as a war rather than a path, etc.

You can learn how to Push yourself.

Successful creative people aren’t just creative people. They do things that help support what they create.

For a writer, this might include PR, web design, networking and bookkeeping.

I think something that successful people often are able to do, but is rarely talked about, is the ability to direct creative energy outside their preferred outlet of expression.

You can do wonders if you just have the energy and the willpower to get it done.

And if you can commit that much for writing, you can do the same for the rest of your life.

2010-02-16T22:43:00.001Z

I may have done something really silly today. But it will make me read more fiction and right now, that’s a really good thing.

And god, please don’t let me accidentally send an email from the wrong account.

Night 1-2-3 pages are definitely better for me. Infinitely better.

I still don’t make the full half an hour, but I think I could get there someday.

I settled for the solution I already had. I figure that since I didn’t yet have another solution, if there was one, it still needed to cook and I might as well ‘practise’ some more.

I think it’ll work out though. My sooperwoman wears her new sooperpower more comfortably than the previous, fuzzy one.

I’m keeping to a one page a day or so minimum too. Some days are easier than others, but none of them painful.

I like that. I think from now on, I shall call my female protagonists sooperwomen and male ones soopermen. It sounds much better than the heroines and heroes of romance, and not nearly as clunky as XX/XY protagonist.

Main character is more inclusive, but it doesn’t really touch on the fact that most – okay, all – my work so far tends to revolve around a love story.

2010-02-13T18:39:00.001Z

This re-write has run into another snag.

My sooperwoman needs a new sooper dooper power that still meets the parameters I’ve already set out.

I could fiddle a bit with the parameters, but I don’t think I have much breathing room. On the other hand, the alternative is to throw this out altogether and start over.

I do have a partial solution that I can use if I can’t come up with something better.

It’ll tie everything up better with another book that I may write someday, but I’m not about to toss a significant amount of plot out just to make it fit better with that book – which, in any case, stands alone.

There’s never anything such as a perfect solution though. Or rather, they exist in your head but cannot be applied exactly so in real life.

Rather like economics.

I’m not looking forward to yet another period of unwriting. Don’t think I have a choice, however.

I suppose I can always stitch in the interim.

I am half-way through Winter White, and have just started Prairie Moon’s The Red and the Black, which puts me happily at 3 starts into The Year of Starts.

2010-02-10T23:49:00.001Z

It snowed today.

Reconsidering my plans to study in Canada now.

I have no idea what I was thinking (maybe that it IS February?) but I decided I’d be warm enough in just a sweater. Which I was. Nearly.

But…snowgasm! In a Sweater! At least it didn’t settle.

I haven’t written pretty much since my exams ended. What’s up with that? So I’ve started on TLOL again.

I would have done so earlier, but it really irritates me that WriteWay does not allow you to open 2 WIPs at a time and I haven’t yet had the time to go print it out.

1-2-3 isn’t going very well. I didn’t do it

I’m just finding it to be such a chore. Damn it.

Habituating

2010-02-09T20:44:00.001Z

How perfect would it have been if I had managed to make this the first post with this tag.

Alas.

There are a lot of studies that have concluded that willpower is a finite resource.

I won’t link to them here, but I do believe it is true.

It makes sense. Everything else is finite. Why wouldn’t willpower be too?

I do, however, also think that willpower is like stamina. If you use it enough, if you work it enough, you’ll have more of it. Similarly, if you use it for running mostly, your stamina goes longer if used for running.

That is, you can also use efficiency more efficiently.

For instance, once you get used to writing every day, it’s easier to write every day. You need less willpower to write every day, so you can have more willpower left over to do other stuff.

Efficiency can also be achieved in another: setting attainable (but not too attainable) goals that are well-defined, i.e. not nebulous.

You don’t want to waste willpower fiddling over how you are going to achieve your goal.

If you say you want to write x amount of words a day, that’s easy. BICHOK.

If you say you want to read more craft books, make that…I don’t know, one every month. I think one every two weeks would be pushing it, but what do I know? I read economics blogs for fun.

This year, there are two things I would like to add to my daily life. 1-2-3 is one of them, and the other is stitching pretty much every single day.

Primarily, the reason is that I need to relax more. I just don’t like waking up about a quarter of the way to a panic attack. Or sitting in a lecture and trying to Zen my heartbeat into a more normal rate.

Now combine the two, and exchange lecture for exam? That’s called a catastrophe waiting to happen.

So new and better habits.

So I can be a better, improved version of me.

2010-02-04T19:21:00.001Z

Morning pages have yet to happen.

I am thinking about turning them into night pages. To empty out my head so I can start afresh in the morning. Maybe it’ll help me sleep.

For now, lunch pages seems to work. We’ll see when my schedule fills up a bit more.

TLOL continues to percolate. I’ve essentially reworked the plotline for the third act, but I still need to fix the first.

I have found my not-so-pretty protagonist’s defining trait, so the first act must change. The plot works, but not the way it is currently written.

MO has titles. Now it needs writing. I will probably work on this in parallel with TLOL, because it has so much in common.

Themes, worldbuilding, timelines even. I think the characters in MO will appear in TLOL and vice versa.

The weather…OMG the weather!

It was freaking chucking it down yesterday. An actual Snowgasm in February! What. The. Fuck?

Talk about January-in-February! Which is, thankfully, going much better than the weather.

Self-Improvement

2010-02-02T19:16:00.001Z

I have a fetish for it.

I like to be able to say ‘I’ve done this in ____.’

It’s less that I want to be a better person, but I want to be better prepared ~~to take over the world~~ to seize every opportunity that comes my way, and just to do things better.

In 2007, it was learning to be more extroverted.

That one was hard.

But it was a good year for that. I think it made my first year away from home a lot easier than it would have been otherwise.

2008 and 2009 was meditation.

The reason why it was the same in 2009 was because 2008 was a bust.

So was 2009, come to that.

Which is how we ended up in 2010.

I’m looking for my replacement for meditation, if that makes sense. A way for me to clear The Space in My Head. Hence 1-2-3 and The Year of Starts, to enable more Stabbing Fabric with a Needle.

I decided that this year, I am going to attempt a multi-pronged approach. 1-2-3 is active, whereas stitching every day is passive.

We’ll see how this one goes. 1-2-3 is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. *bangs head*

I periodically do this with my gadgets too.

I have given up on Outlook. Chrome has to go. Word doesn’t quite fit my writing needs so now I have WriteWayPro. Twitter is better with a Twitter client rather than on web. So forth.

I may settle for Google-izing my laptop in the short-term*, but I doubt I’ll actually do that. I don’t like Chrome. I really don’t like Chrome.

I think that everything can be improved. It’s just a question of whether the improvement is worth the time you spend getting there.

I am, after all, an economist. Marginal marginal marginal!

*Defined as for the next year to eighteen months, as I’ll almost definitely switch out my current laptop for another, or at least get a secondary.

2010-02-01T19:00:00.001Z

I did get around to 1-2-3. Just at lunch time rather than the planned breakfast time.

I expect that I’ll be doing it at the same time tomorrow as I have a 9 o’ clock start and I’ll be out late tonight.

TLOL still suffers from the Heebie-Jeebies.

I may start messing around with my M.O. Which because I think I’m funny, I have tagged Modus Operandi.

Even though it actually stands for Magnum Opus.

But I’m still in social butterfly* mode, so you know, unwriting and not much work will be done.

*That’s why the start mentioned in yesterday’s post has yet to happen.

Starts

2010-01-31T01:00:00.000Z

I like to start things.

Starts are fun. They are bright and shiny and new and they make you feel all happy and excited.

I love to start new stitching projects. So I am having a 2010: The Year of Starts.

I aim for at least 12 starts, but I can start anything and everything I want. I have at least 12 projects kitted up (meaning that all I have to do is put the fabric on the frame and go go go!). That is how much stash I have accumulated over the past few years.

I have begun my January start, which is Sampler Cove’s Taking Flight.

Tomorrow, I shall start something new.

I have discovered that I don’t enjoy starting new writing projects nearly as much, however.

Writing projects, especially big writing projects, require mental preparation. A lot of mental preparation.

I used to like starting them. But that was because I didn’t do any mental preparation – I could and would literally start something new just because of a pretty new sentence. I never, and haven’t, finished anything.

And that absolutely has to change.

1-2-3

2010-01-30T16:21:00.001Z

The Plan:

1. Write first thing every day for half an hour.

2. Email to sooper-sekrit account.

3. Rinse and repeat.

2010-01-29T20:10:00.001Z

Exams are over.

Immediate metamorphosis into social butterfly.

Unwriting to commence as my Model has collapsed, partially due to lack of brainwork and mostly due to an attack of the Heebie-Jeebies.

2010-01-27T23:59:00.001Z

Milestone.

My novel has reached the 10k mark, and according to WriteWay, ahead of schedule as well.

Courage

2010-01-27T19:03:00.001Z

I need some.

In fact, I think I need loads of it.

I’m seriously contemplating Dutch courage. Except I don’t think it’s good for me to do stuff that could lead to addictions.

I already have an obsessive personality. If I add addictive to that, I think the rest of my life will just go down the toilet.

I have been driven to this because I’ve realised my barrier to finishing this book is me.

I mean, I’ve always known that. It’s generally true of everything one wishes to accomplish.

The difficulty that I mentioned a few days ago has become clearer to me, if not at all simpler to resolve.

I have the ‘small story’. By this, I mean the storyline of the characters in the novel. But I haven’t yet been able to put the ‘big picture’ into writing.

If the small story is what’s on the chessboard, then the big picture IS the chessboard.

Don’t ask me how I play chess without a chessboard because I will hurt you.

I sent a brain-dribbling-out email to Nadia a few months back, maybe late summer last year, and looking it over, I’ve realised that all that was in there was the small story.

I know I have the big picture. It’s In My Head.

It just never appears to translate into what’s on the screen. Or if it does, it’s buried so deep even I can’t see it.

I acknowledge that this has always been a problem for me. How else would I have achieved partial manuscripts with only 2 characters?

But I’ve never felt this as keenly, maybe because I never had enough of the small story to realise that there was still stuff lacking.

So back to courage.

I need some, I think, to get the big picture out of my head and in words.

Doesn’t matter how awful, or how bad it is. I need to get it out where I can see it so I can tear it down and fix it.

Which sounds so easy, and is probably why all the writing advice ever given to me boils down to:

Write the damn thing. Fix it later.

2010-01-24T21:49:00.002Z

Odd.

I swear I’m undergoing difficulties…but WriteWay tells me that I’ve written over a thousand words in the past two days.

And I would say that WriteWay has lost its mind (a theme so prevalent in my life right now that it ought to have its own tag) but for the fact that I thought about it, realised that I have written one completely new scene, and added to two others.

This novel has been different in every way.

The writing of it has been surprisingly easy. Not that I don’t wrack my brains over the plot and so forth, but I have never felt like I’ve to cut myself to bleed the words out onto the page.

Nor have I wanted to throw out this entire draft to start all over, despite the fact that I am nearly at the 10k mark.

Still thinking about January-in-February.

Joely said she’d be my accountability partner for it.*

I dread the thought of getting up early to scribble three pages before class, though I know what’s good for you is often hard to do.

It’s the logistics of it that bother me. I don’t know how I want to do it.

I do know that I want to get up in the mornings to do it.

But do I do it by hand on paper and toss it? Open up a new word doc every day, write it in an email and send it to sooper-dooper-sekrit account? How?

* If you’re interested, just ping me. I am Cardinal Emily of Gmail, with a full-stop between Cardinal and Emily. Apparently there’s another, more evil Emily Cardinal out there.

2010-01-23T14:25:00.002Z

I’m stuck at a…difficulty.

I hesitate to call it a wall, as I can go around it. Climb over it, and come back to it later, at least in principle.

In principle because if I was thinking about plot, then yeah, I can come back later.

I know what happens in this chapter, and, until maybe a scene or two ago, the balance I had in mind was carefully maintained.

Then I lost it. Probably together with what was left of my brains on Tuesday after two exams back to back.

That symmetry amuses me as much as the symmetry I see inside my work every where.

Structure, on the other hand, is different from plot.

It is the hidden cogs of the machine, a lot more complicated to fix than grammar or story.

The former can be learned, and the latter has since become, if not simpler, then clearer to me.

But you can’t fix what you can’t see. Yet.

2010-01-20T21:15:00.002Z

Yes. I know. I’m supposed to be dead to the world and unwriting*.

But sometimes the urge takes over and exam tomorrow be-damned.

My cast is slowly expanding, and my multiple storylines are weaving themselves in and out to make a coherent whole.

Never mind nailing Euler equations. This is a whole new level of high.

I have decided I will be doing a January-in-February** challenge, to kick-start my 3 pages in the morning habit to empty my not-so-little mind of its detritus first thing.

I haven’t decided yet how I’ll do it. Pen and paper just doesn’t really appeal to me. At the moment, I’m considering typing 3 pages, whilst listening to Britney Spears’s Three on repeat, and not saving any of it.

Except…what if there are gems in there? There might be, like, diamonds in the rough.

*unwriting is my version of unwinding.

**Something I’ll probably not be able to do next year because I would like to celebrate what might be my first and last Chinese New Year at home in years in proper style.

Blogging

2010-01-19T10:30:00.001Z

This isn’t the first blog I’ve had. Not even close. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three previous ones.

Two I kept for a good long while, with regular updates. One must have had over a thousand posts over its several-year lifespan. Maybe even two thousand. I suspect that I can check because I don’t think my attempts to delete them were successful.

But some things are best left dead in the water and hopefully decomposing into nothingness

For most of my blogging life, I have had more than one blog a time. Sometimes because I contributed elsewhere, but mostly because I wished to keep my book blog and my writing blog separate.

To be honest, I don’t know why I wanted the separation. I did think it was better for my audience, such as it were.

But it was hard, especially towards the end.

I am a writer first, and a reader second. The fact that I am a writer too has changed the way I read.

Which brings me to this: consolidation.

I don’t have the time for more than one blog. But at the same time, I do want a blog.

I like that I have a platform to say whatever it is I want to say, and I am arrogant enough to think that what I have to say is worth reading. It is, naturally, your prerogative to disagree – in which case, I do have to ask, why are you reading this?

Especially since this blog is more about and for me than any of the previous ones I have had in the past. Which isn’t to say that I don’t welcome comments, because I do, but simply to say that this blog is focused on me.

As I told a sooper-dooper writing pal in an email today, this blog is my mental space for Emily Cardinal*, and Emily Cardinal is this person who’s writing this novel without a title** about reincarnation, obsession, and how the world will/could/should/might/should not change in allegory.

*In case you did not realise, I am not Emily Cardinal in my day-to-day life.

**I am waiting for inspiration to strike so that I can change the tag from TLOL to something else. And no, it does not stand for The LOL. Well, it does, but not in the Laugh Out Loud kind of way.

Minima

2010-01-15T16:34:00.001Z

I wouldn’t say that I had a fetish for minimalism, though I do prefer simplicity, clean lines and elegance over baroque, over-the-top chaos.

I’m using Blogger rather than something else because I had to have this template – I think I still prefer WordPress, but WP’s interface…

True, I could probably have found a substitute, but in this case, Minima refers to minimal work involved.

My words stand for themselves.

In Minima, there is nothing to draw your eye away from my words.

It’s not to say that they wouldn’t if I had a fancier template, but I think the simplicity of this one makes a statement by itself.

Winter

2010-01-13T09:50:00.001Z

This is by far the coldest winter I’ve experienced in my three years in Manchester.

I remember that I was wearing just a sweater right up to mid-November 2008. But I was wearing my long black coats by the same time last year.

Not to mention I think I only wore my brown calf leather jacket like twice because it got too cold, too quickly.

It’s so so so so cold.

When I left Singapore, it must have been about 30 C.

Friday morning, it was –10 C when I stepped out of the plane, and snow everywhere. All I had was a wool sweater. I thought I’d never be warm again after that.

I came home, and climbed into bed and stayed there until I could feel my toes again. And my ears too.

It seemed like a perfectly rational thing to do at the time, never mind the fact that I was starving.

It’s not negative degrees any more. This I can tell because my ears no longer hurt when I’m outdoors.

And the snow, it is melting.

The snow is now that dreadful thing called Slush.

I hate Slush even more than I hate snow, but I think less than I hate sleet.

The slush has refrozen into ice. I am ice-skating in regular, non-ice-skating boots.

It is a lot of fun. Especially the part where you skid/skedaddle your way with 2 bags and a bunch of groceries. But as an exercise, it leaves much to be desired.

The ice is melting too. But not quickly enough.

Melting ice water on top of ice leads to Shinkansen* speed skidding/skedaddling.

(If you are meant to be part of my audience, you will appreciate the lovely alliteration, bolded for your admiration.)

Tomorrow, I shall appreciate the rapidly melting ice from comfort and warmth of my bed, with 13.5 tog duvet.

*I do believe that the new Chinese trains between their major cities will be or are faster, however, in the face of alliteration, even accuracy must falter.

2010-01-11T10:40:00.002Z

Going on writing hiatus for the next few weeks.

Writing economics essays is not a conducive environment for writing fiction.

Besides which, I need to consider whether I will actually splurge for WriteWay. I like it, but it is still 30USD that I could use for something else.

Slush

2010-01-08T20:22:00.000Z

When I arrived in Manchester yesterday, it was white everywhere.

The city never looked so clean.

Or so cold.

Snow to slush. Ick. Now Manchester is back to the dirty city I’ve lived in for more than two years now.

I decided that I needed better shoes for the snow after I fell twice on the way into town.

Originally, I wanted wellies. I mean, I live in the UK. I ought to have a pair. Besides, my fake uggs got wet and really manky and after I slipped twice, I decided I needed shoes with better grip. But all my shoes are pretty and adorable and heeled and not so much on practicality. Because I’m vain like that.

Instead, I got another pair of black boots. They look a bit like combat boots, but not quite. I’ve been eyeing boots like that for ages and ages and ages now.

So now I own five pairs of black boots. I think they cover every kind possible because I have them in suede, regular leather and patent leather. I have them in ankle-height, calf-height and knee-high. I have them in lace up and zip up. I have kitten heels, thin near-stilettos, chunky and nearly flats. I also have comfy, sooper comfy and OMG-they-are-killing-me.

I may have to stop buying a new pair every year now.

…I cannot believe I just said that.

Since I'm a writer, I cannot possibly have a post titled 'Slush' without bringing up the dreaded Slush Pile.

I've never been in the slush pile because I've never submitted anything.

I hope that changes soon.